Cape Fear

What does it take to make a solid supervillain? To make a worthy opponent for a movie superhero, the supervillain needs both outsized powers or skills. And outsized ambition to use them for self-aggrandizement. A baroque sense of style is a plus, and so is a twisted backstory – though that’s not a must, since sometimes a supervillain is scarier when his (or her) evil nature can’t be explained away by past trauma.

Time and the audience will tell if the Mandarin, played by Ben Kingsley in the new Iron Man 3, gets to join the pantheon of classic comic-book movie supervillains. (Sure, he’s one of Iron Man’s most venerable opponents in the books, but on screen, he offers some surprises that may rankle purists.) Here are ten of the examples he has to live up to (down to?) if he wants to join the superhero movie supervillain hall of infamy.

There are two villains that deserve to be on this list more than some of these: Maleficent from "Sleeping Beauty" (The scene of her turning into a fire throwing dragon would give the stoutest nightmares!) and Ursula from "Little Mermaid". Just because they are animated does not make them less as villains.

Loki? Kingpin? Who came up with this list? They should have said super viliains from comic book adaptations. If we are talking super viliains in general, what about The Terminator? Magneto as someone mentioned below. What about KAAAHHHHHNNNN!!!? Or the biggest baddie of them all, Darth Vader and his predecessor Darth Maul?

If you read the first slide, you'll see that this is a list of villains in movies adapted from superhero comic books (hence, no Vader/Blofeld/Moriarty). Also, Mandarin isn't on the list, just mentioned in the intro -- and how about the common courtesy of a *Spoiler Alert*? Not everyone saw IM3 this past weekend (it just seemed like it).

That said, at the risk of overdoing the Batman villains, how about the Penguin, played to comic perfection by Burgess Meredith in the 1966 film, and to unnerving effect by Danny DeVito in "Batman Returns." I'd also pick almost any of the X-Men villains over about half the ones listed here.